Saturday 28 April 2012 18.00 EDT
First published on Saturday 28 April 2012 18.00 EDT

Carlos Tevez once claimed he would retire from professional football at the age of 28. Shortly before celebrating that birthday on 5 February, the Manchester City and Argentina striker was reminded of his prophecy. "It's something I said years ago," said Tevez. "But I wonder whether all this is just coincidence or if I had some sort of premonition: did I sense the future?"

The words "all this" referred to his unilateral decision last November to mount a one-player strike by departing on an indefinite sabbatical to Buenos Aires. It followed a long, festering feud with City's manager, Roberto Mancini, culminating in Tevez's refusal to warm up during a 2-0 Champions League defeat at Bayern Munich. He may have arrived in disgrace rather than clutching a gold carriage clock but, once back in South America, the joint winner of last season's Premier League golden boot began behaving in the manner of many a newly retired man.

Tevez's wardrobes became temples to a growing obsession with golf, swiftly filling up with an assortment of loudly checked shorts and trousers, designed to ensure the wearer stands out from the crowd en route to the 18th hole. If hours spent improving a promising swing – sometimes alongside Vanessa, his no-longer-estranged wife – filled the gaps once occupied by football, there was also the rediscovery of an old hobby.

Down the years Tevez and his brother Diego have sung together in a band called Piola Vago and once had a major hit single in Argentina with Lose Your Control. His "sabbatical" duly featured the forward appearing as a slightly nervous looking lead vocalist during a one-off gig alongside local musicians. Throw in regular sun-suffused trips to the beach alongside Vanessa and their two young daughters as well as frequent work-outs under a personal trainer's demanding gaze and life seemed perfectly calibrated.

Indeed after Tevez helped his professional partners Sebastián Fernández and Andrés Romero win a pro-am golf tournament in Buenos Aires before shining in another event in Cordoba, Fernández said he was struck not only by the high calibre of the footballer's technique but his extraordinary aura of "inner peace".

If such tranquillity on the part of a man then in the process of losing £6m in forfeited wages and bonuses, not to mention hefty fines, seems surprising, Tevez, who earns £250,000 a week at City, is so rich that this mid-career crisis represented an easily affordable luxury.

Moreover, while the sobering reality that Kia Joorabchian, his long-standing adviser, had spent the January transfer window failing to persuade leading European clubs to match that remuneration and offer City an acceptable fee, provided pause for thought, Tevez retained a certain ambivalence towards football.

Paradoxically, a player invariably noted for extraordinary on-field commitment is described as, at times, having something of a love-hate relationship with a game that, during down moments, he has contemplated walking away from for good. Confidants suspect he experienced something of an epiphany in Buenos Aires, with a Damascene moment possibly arriving when Tevez attended a testimonial honouring his former Boca Juniors team-mate Martín Palermo and finally realised he loved football after all.

Ten days later, on 14 February, the Tevez family boarded a Paris-bound flight with an onward connection to Manchester. "I was tired of the fame and I always said I would finish at 28," he told a reporter. "But today I say 'no', I have much more to give in my career." By the time he landed in Manchester transcripts of an another, somewhat spiky, southern hemisphere interview in which he accused Mancini of treating him "like a dog" were shaping the sports news agenda.

Tevez, meanwhile, was more concerned with what might happen when he switched his mobile phone on as the plane taxied to its stand. Much to his relief, a series of beeps soon registered the arrival of eight messages from City first-teamers welcoming him back. In the "real" world a colleague returning to a vital project after going similarly awol could, if not already sacked, expect to be studiously blanked by fellow workers. Footballers, though, are arch pragmatists whose parallel universe is so amoral that the name of Ched Evans, the Sheffield United striker newly convicted of rape, was applauded at last Sunday's PFA dinner following his inclusion in League One's team of the season.

City's players not only realised that the growing lack of attacking connectivity between Sergio Agüero, Edin Dzeko and Mario Balotelli had undermined their title hopes but appreciated the shades of grey surrounding Tevezgate. If their former manager Mark Hughes was unwise to describe Mancini as "an autocrat", that label still chimes unfortunately with the modus operandi of an Italian whose past failure to cope with Craig Bellamy's foibles raises legitimate question marks. Significantly, the schism between the former Internazionale head coach and Tevez had arguably been further exacerbated by the exaggerated importance placed on "respect" in Fuerte Apache, the infamously tough Buenos Aires ghetto where the latter grew up.

Months of mutual suspicion, not even allayed by an evening invitation for coffee chez Mancini, erupted on that September night in Munich. "I was willing to play," said Tevez. "But the coach was in such a foul mood because he'd had an argument with Dzeko. Then he started on me and began swearing. He said some horrible things."

Proceeding to claim that Mancini had treated him like a canine hardly constituted the brightest move yet the ensuing media storm did not properly reflect mindsets at City, where a suddenly pragmatic manager conveniently forgot his declaration that the striker would "never" play for him again. Senior club officials had heard the "dog" comments – and worse – before, namely at Tevez's post-Munich disciplinary hearing, the minutes of which are reputedly regarded as far too incendiary to ever be allowed to fall into media hands.

His words did not prevent his immersion into a fast-track fitness programme or stop Mancini readily accepting an apology when, after several days of cold shouldering to preserve managerial dignity, the pair finally came face to face. Two months – and four goals, plus a few assists – later and their rapprochement seems utterly sincere, with Mancini laughing when the former Manchester United forward cheekily celebrated a hat-trick at Norwich by pretending to swing a golf club.

Bolstered by a marriage now firmly back on track in semi-rural Cheshire, Tevez has morphed into an epitome of the model professional. Not content with rattling Sir Alex Ferguson ahead of Monday's title showdown by delighting in selflessly bringing the best out in Agüero, he is even voluntarily undertaking charity assignments on days off.

Those who cautioned that, in accepting him back into the fold, Mancini had entered a Faustian pact should perhaps ponder the parable of the Prodigal Son.